PROGRAM TRAY

Some applets deposit icons in the system tray of the KDE or Gnome task bar. If you don’t use KDE or Gnome but you still want the system tray applets, check out Trayer.

Window managers such as Fluxbox [1] provide their own interface for KDE and Gnome applets. These miniature programs slot into the system tray of the task bar, adding all kinds of practical functions. For example, the KDE alarm daemon keeps track of your appointments. The KMail applet monitors your mailbox. And some programs that are not even part of the major desktop distributions add their own quick-access applets.

If you would like to keep these goodies even though you are using an alternative window manager, Trayer could be a big help. This handy tool lets you add a task bar anywhere on the desktop, giving you a convenient space to drop your tray applets. The program is based on Anatoly Asviyan’s fbpanel [2]. Maciej Delmanowski extracted the tray components from this program launcher and came up with a stand-alone application.

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